Boulevard of Dreams
by SydCryn
Summary: Sam's musings after a few years in California. Told first person through a journal.


Boulevard of Dreams 

Rating - K+ Disclaimer - I'm just borrowing from the usual crew, GE, Sorkin, etc. Don't hurt me.

Author's Notes: I just wanted to try and delve a little bit into Sam's feelings and thoughts over the years. The general setup is completely fictional. It's meant to be a journal entry.

WWWWWWWWWW

I don't know who in life first told me that it was a wonderful goal to be a leader. Maybe my Dad, maybe my second grade teacher. I really can't remember, but I do remember the words that were spoken clear as day. "Be a leader Sam, make a path in the world that no one else can miss and that everyone will want to follow. Be that shining star that everyone will know and will tell their children to look up to. Great leaders are our heroes, they make the world a better place to be." I really wish I could remember who exactly it was that told me that. Then I could tell them to go to hell.

Like most kids when they're young all I really wanted to do was to please my parents and make them proud of me. So I studied really hard and was at the top of my class. The awards box was piled full with various certificates and ribbons. My parents claimed to be proud of me and my accomplishments, but I felt like something was missing. Anyone could get a 99 on their Calculus exam if they tried just a little bit. Eventually my parents started just absently telling me how great my grades were when I came trotting home with another A, it was the same old stuff and I got bored and frustrated with the lack of interest around me.

So I went back to what I had been told when I was wee little, that being a leader was the best way to shoot myself into stardom and gain instant love from all, so that was to be my new goal. High School wasn't the best way to get a start, but I tried. When I wasn't voted into Student Council or permitted to be Treasurer of the Business Club, I started my own club. Who doesn't love chess after all? I got a few people to come and join out of pity. The teachers laughed and told me how cute my little club was. This was obviously not the way to go if I wanted to be a great leader. There had to be some sort of flaw with the plan.

I decided I would be able to start fresh with my leadership goal in College and attack it from a new angle. I had gotten into a good school due to my grades and honors at least, even if I was severely lacking in the leadership portion of my application. Getting a fresh new start at everything helped too. When I arrived on the first day I remember thinking to myself, 'This is a great and wonderful school, leaders come out of it by the dozens and do glorious things with their lives, so will I. This school will teach me how. I will change the world!'.

I managed a few leadership positions mostly due to the fact that the clubs were desperate for people willing to do some work. Every week it seemed someone was offering some seminar or advise on what a good leader was or how to find my inner leader and I attended them religiously. I was able to prove my worth and prove that I could do various jobs competently and well. I organized things and people attended and they applauded the work I had done. 'This is it,' I thought. 'This is being a leader. I can do this, no problem'.

My internships really opened my eyes to the ways of the real world. I completed four of them over my years at Princeton and I left the experience with one important bit of knowledge. There was a distinct and real difference between management and leadership, and what I had been doing in school was mostly management. Managers were smart, capable people who were good at their job and were rewarded as such with higher positions where they had people working under them. These people reported to them and followed their direction because they had to, they wanted to keep their jobs. Leaders were smart, capable people who were good at their jobs, but had people follow them because they wanted to, not because they had to. A leader was someone who could inspire you to follow, to go for the big goal, and be true to yourself. All of those big lofty, fuzzy sounding goals that everyone was supposed to desire and want.

I learned I most definitely wasn't a leader.

This left me feeling pretty down about life. I was no closer to figuring out how to be a leader than I was six years ago when I'd started college. Then something interesting happened. I had decided to accept a position on the Hill. It wasn't anything interesting, but I thought if I surrounded myself with all of the great leaders that sat on the Hill then I would be able to learn something. The inspiration and knowledge that hit me actually came in the form of a right hook to the jaw. When the poor guy that had stumbled into my little cubicle late at night and drunk off his ass finally sobered up enough to apologize I learned that his name was Josh Lyman. And from that point on I thought my world had changed.

The years passed by quickly after that. I was able to meet a lot people through Josh, but eventually I settled down at Gage Whitney. I had connections that would allow a fast track through the company and it was good money. I couldn't really refuse it at the time. As the years continued to passed I got more and more restless however. I had a good job, a good life in general, but it wasn't enough. It really came back to the same problem I had in high school, 'Oh, you worked out another big deal? That's nice dear.' Same old, same old. I never felt like I was really accomplishing anything worthwhile. My dreams of leadership and greatness faded into the background.

And then Josh stumbled into my life once again (He was getting pretty good at that really) and I ended up quitting my job, living on the road for nine months, and then moving to Washington DC. I'll give Josh this, one look from him can move someone's world. Quite literally. I was deliriously happy at first. I was working in the White House. I was accomplishing something great. My life now had a little bit of meaning to it. Now I was a leader.

And I discovered it sucked.

It turns out being a leader really means that you're always the fall guy, the guy that everyone hates because you're not capable of granting the wishes of every single person in existence. You can't bend steel with your bare hands so that makes you unworthy. Nobody knows who you are and nobody respects the position you have. They just laugh it off as nothing important. Even being at the top of the foodchain is overrated sometimes, I could see the strain in Bartlet's eyes everyday. But at least people will remember who he was fifty years from now. Fifty years from now when someone asks about Sam Seaborn the response will be "Sam who?"

After four years I left, all of the hate and resentment and bitterness just got to me. I walked out the door without a backwards glance. I told everyone that it was because I had other dreams I wanted to pursue, I had to give this election in California a shot. The truth was, I just needed out. They didn't trust me at the White House anymore. The good days were getting fewer and fewer, and the bad days worse and worse. Not only was I laughed at any time I had an inkling of leadership showing out, but my regular work was getting thrown out the door too.

I lost the election of course, but it had served it's purpose of helping me to get free. Now I'm working at Berkeley (CJ's so proud of me, sent me a dozen roses on my first day, if you don't think I got a few weird looks for that one then you're out of your mind) as a PoliSci professor. It's relaxing and fulfilling and I even have time for a girlfriend. And she's not a call girl, or my boss's daughter, or even a co-worker. She's just a normal girl. It's great.

But I feel empty now.

It's a funny thing about the mind, it tends to forget pain and frustration. It only remembers the good things. It only remembers the good days, the days where my word changed the policy of this country, the days where my input was counted as useful. It then squishes all those days together and everytime I think about my years in the White House I flash back to those few dozen good days rather than the years of bad days. I remember when I was a leader, not a follower, not a scape goat.

The kids are great, don't get me wrong, a few of them even have real potential to go places. But when you've worked in the White House helping to shape the lives of a few kids versus the entire country just doesn't seem quite as exciting, no matter how shallow that might make me sound.

I wait patiently for the day when Josh will show up on my doorstep once again and say, 'Sam, come with me' and I can start again on a new path of discovery. I suppose that waiting for Josh to show up defeats one of those great lofty ideas of leadership. I'm supposed to step up and take charge of my destiny. I've found that part of leadership is knowing when to step back though, even if it's letting someone else take control of your destiny.

Some people see me as the person that ran away from responsibility and now am crawling back on his hands and knees. Perhaps that's what I am, a failure. I prefer to think of it as a man who took some time to get better perspective. Will I end up following the same failed path as before? Perhaps. But that's the biggest thing I've discovered about being a leader, we tend to like to beat ourselves up. We can't give up on an idea or a thought. We keep going for the bigger goal no matter what life throws at us.

To conclude this lengthy entry, I wouldn't really go back and tell whoever had told told me to be a leader to go to hell. But it's always good to sit back and get ones perspective on the world sometimes, to start from a place of bitterness and follow it to it's conclusion. With that journey you can discover the way to a better path.

WWWWWWWWW

Sam set his pen down and closed his journal very carefully, as if closing his most treasured possession. He smoothed his hand over the leather on the front, giving a moment to clear his mind before getting up and going downstairs to answer the doorbell that had just rung.

When he looked out the peephole he smiled a bit before opening the door wide to admit his friend.

"Hi Josh"


End file.
